Of Mice and Men By: John Steinbeck

By: Sierra Schaeffer and Hayley Bostian

Of Mice and Men By: John Steinbeck

By: Sierra Schaeffer and Hayley Bostian

The Great Depression

The Great Depression began in 1929 and continued until 1939. It was the longest lasting economic downturn in history for the Western industrialized world. The Great Depression began after the stock market crashed in October of 1929.

During the Great Depression, consumer spending and investment dropped, which caused steep declines in industrial output and rising levels of unemployment as companies that were failing laid off workers. In 1933, 13 to 15 million people were unemployed and nearly half of the banks had failed. In the midst of the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt helped lessen the worst effects of the Depression. Finally, in 1939, World War II kicked American industry into high gear, which ended the Great Depression.

The American Dream

The American Dream is the views that people, such as immigrants, have about America, such as freedom, democracy, rights, liberty, opportunities, and equality. It is also an upward social mobility for the family and children, achieved through hard work in a society with few barriers.

The American Dream was rooted in the Declaration of Independence, which proclaims that "all men are created equal" with the right to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

John Steinbeck

Born on February 27, 1902, in Salinas, California, Steinbeck dropped out of college and worked as a manual laborer before becoming a successful writer.

In 1939 he wrote a novel titled The Grapes of Wrath about a family's migration from Oklahoma to California, which won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. John Steinbeck also served as a war correspondent during World War 2, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1962. Unfortunately, he died in New York City in 1968.